Class of 2023
Isaiah Aladejobi
My name is Isaiah Aladejobi and I am a visual communicator born and raised in Washington DC with a cultural juxtaposition of Nigerian traditions. I communicate my work conceptually around cross culture experiences and how cultural traditions can be preserved by implementing the past with the present and contributing to the future. I’m currently at RISD studying Industrial Design to further my purpose of bridging that gap between groups of people through functionable artwork. You will also point out his signature design which are clouds influenced by design elements from Nigerian artifacts and art. You can also find me as PZay The Creative.
Arvind Bhallamudi
Arvind is a multidisciplinary creator at the intersection of industrial design, emerging technology and product strategy. With a background in mechanical engineering, he previously worked at start-ups as a designer, engineer, analyst, manager and teacher. His current area of exploration is biodesign, healthcare and additive manufacturing. With a curious and creative mind, Arvind is interested in transforming ideas into marketable products and aims to build innovative and affordable solutions for circular systems. Besides at work, you'll find Arvind taking inspiration from nature, photographing wildlife or making music.
arvindbhallamudi.com
abhallam@risd.edu
Steve Chang
Steve Chang is an interior designer and artist. He finished his undergraduate degree in Finance in Soochow University and worked as an interior designer for over ten years. He is passionate about startups and the latest technology.
Maxwell Fertik
Artist and experimental designer with a dual BA in art history and sculpture from Trinity College. Published in the Kunstkammer: Princeton Journal of Undergraduate Art. Worked as a studio assistant for the artist FOS (Thomas Poulsen) in Copenhagen, DK. Concerned with material culture, domestic spaces and machine learning.
Calgary Haines-Trautman
I am a masters student at the Rhode Island School of Design Industrial Design Department, graduating in May 2023. I am passionate about community-focused, sustainable and biophilic design using healthy materials.
After working in museum education for five years, my interests and experiences with design, fine arts, history of science, and community engagement led me to Industrial Design. I bring my diverse background to my design work, leveraging my experiences in everything from planning a mummy-themed family Halloween party for over 600 guests to experimenting with plaster casting and silicone mold-making techniques in my apartment studio. I aim to build my design and making skills while leveraging my sculpture, education resource development, and program management background.
When I'm not in my studio, I enjoy exploring the beautiful coastline of Rhode Island, cooking up increasingly-elaborate meals, and reading about community-oriented visions for the future—both real and speculative.
Jian Li
Jian Li finished his undergraduate degree of product design in East China Normal University. He loves consumer electronics devices and automobiles. Jian is a social animal and enjoys making friends. He is also willing to try a variety of design styles and is always curious about the world we live in.
Cynthia Lu
Cynthia Lu is an artist and engineer. She has a background in electrical engineering, and her works ask how technology and art can better inform human-centric design.
She was co-founder and artist for Evergate, a video game. She was a product designer at Vecna, a robotics and healthcare company. She was a competitor on Battlebots, a TV show.
Sarah Alix Mann
Sarah is a designer and curator exploring how practice can be guided by nature and cultural context. Her projects have been realized in hand-made products, built spaces, natural landscapes, digital platforms, and art exhibits.
Before coming to RISD, Sarah was part of a core team that designed and opened La Nueva Fábrica, a contemporary art museum and residency program in Guatemala, which she oversaw as the Founding Director. Sarah also worked with natural resource management at World Resources Institute, where she helped launch multiple forest mapping initiatives.
Jae Nam
Jae is an emerging Industrial Designer who enjoys creating meaningful discursive products and services while working with group members who focus on common goals. He is fascinated by how various areas of industry require Industrial Designers to voluntarily re-educate themselves to be able to operate properly in given fields. The difficulty, challenge and satisfaction in design is what drives and motivates Jae to pursue Industrial Design. Upon receiving his BFA in Industrial Design at Rhode Island School of Design, Jae joined the Master of Industrial Design program with the aim of broadening his design reasoning, technical skills development and learning collegiate art & design pedagogy.
Ray Sun
Ray is a Master of industrial design student, her bachelor's degree is in product design. Because of her fine art background, she enjoys expressing herself with sketches. She has a lot of very interesting and playful ideas.
Hanqing Tang
Hanqing is a first year graduate student enrolled in the 2.5-year program of Industrial Design at RISD. Her background is Preventive Medicine, Public Health. After studying Preventive Medicine for 5 years, she realized that more often than not, what modern medicine and doctors can offer is quite limited after diseases occur. She hopes for the appearance of more products in the future to help people better protect themselves from harmful factors in their surroundings. She wishes to create intelligent products that can enable people to gain control of their health by monitoring their physical and mental environment. She intertwines her background and inspiration from everyday life as well as nature into her work. She’s also into photography, sleep and daydream.
Haroon Waseem
With a background in Mechanical Engineering, Haroon aims to extend his skillset from core technical knowledge to user-focused design research into designing meaningful products to change lives.
In the past, Haroon has worked from the manufacturing industry to mobility design. His recent work spans from virtual experiences to assistive healthcare devices.
Max Werner
Qingxian Xu
Qingxian is a hardware product designer and the founder of Equals Studio. After graduating from China Academy of Art by learning ceramic design, she worked on the civilian industry products. She believes in humanistic design and Democratic design. In her work, she is always looking for a balance between industrial production and craft aesthetics. She is currently a graduate student in industrial design at RISD to explore the application of bio-design, human sociology and material processes in design.